There’s a humdinger of a column over at the Philadelphia Daily News. It’s from Sam Donnellon. The premise: a very 2003-era column excoriating stat nerds — he makes a non-ironic allusion to mother’s basements — who have the gall to tell him that the things he sees with his own two eyes aren’t true. You’ve heard it all before a zillion times, so there’s no sense in sharp-shooting every willfully ignorant point.

But if Donnellon is going to rest his world view on the value of his two eyes and his memory, it’s probably worth seeing how good those two eyes and that memory is. Let’s take one easily checkable assertion.

Donnellon talks up Jack Morris by talking up the value of the won-loss record. He cites his colleague David Murphy’s arguments that a won-loss record is one of the more irrelevant measures of a pitcher’s value. Then:

Murphy has mentioned Cliff Lee’s 2012 season as recent evidence of this. There is no doubt that Lee deserved better. But the naked eye, the one that watched the season in its entirety, recalls at least a handful of times when he received substantial leads and could not hold them. Morris would say, I suppose, that in those cases, he failed to pitch to the scoreboard.

Clearly, statistics are not irrelevant. But they should be used to support the naked eye, not create an alternate reality.

I don’t know what you would consider a “substantial lead,” but if you call it three runs or more, Lee blew such a “substantial lead” exactly once last year. On June 10 against the Orioles, when he frittered away a three-run lead. And that game he left with the score tied and got a no-decision. In contrast, he left games that were tied or with the Phillies ahead nine times.

But yes, I’m sure it’s all because of his poor moxie or inability to pitch to the score or something that Donnellon could tell you that he saw with his own two eyes.

Former Mets catcher Johnny Monell signed a contract with the KT Wiz of the Korea Baseball Organization, per a report by Chris Cotillo of SB Nation. The 30-year-old originally struck a deal with the NC Dinos on Thursday, but the deal appeared to fall through at the last minute, according to Cotillo’s unnamed source.

Monell last surfaced for the Mets during their 2015 run, batting a dismal .167/.231/.208 with two extra bases in 52 PA before the club DFA’d him to clear space for Bartolo Colon. While he’s had difficulty sticking at the major league level, he’s found a higher degree of success in the minor league circuit and holds a career .271 average over a decade of minor league play. He played exclusively in Triple-A Las Vegas during the 2016 season, slashing .276/.336/.470 with 19 home runs and a career-high 75 RBI in 461 PA.

The veteran backstop appears to be the second MLB player to join the KT Wiz roster this offseason, as right-hander Donn Roach also signed with the club last month on a one-year, $850,000 deal.

Brewers’ right-hander Phil Bickford received a 50-game suspension after testing positive for a drug of abuse, per the Los Angeles Times’ Bill Shaikin. This is the second time Bickford has been suspended for recreational drug use, as he was previously penalized in 2015 after testing positive for marijuana prior to the amateur draft.

Bickford was selected by the Giants in the first round of the 2015 draft and was later dealt to the Brewers for lefty reliever Will Smith at the 2016 trade deadline. He finished his 2016 campaign in High-A Brevard County, pitching to a 3.67 ERA, 10.0 K/9 rate and 5.0 BB/9 over 27 innings.

Two other suspensions were handed down on Friday, one to Toronto minor league right-hander Pedro Loficial for a positive test for metabolites of Stanozolol and one to Miami minor league outfielder Casey Soltis for a second positive test for drugs of abuse. Loficial will serve a 72-game suspension, while Soltis will serve 50 games. All three suspensions are due to start at the beginning of the 2017 season for each respective minor league team.

We are very disappointed to learn of Phil’s suspension, but we fully support the Minor League Baseball Drug Prevention and Testing Program and its enforcement by the Commissioner’s Office. Phil understands he made a mistake, and we fully anticipate that he will learn from this experience.